Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description in this section is not prior art to the claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The present disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus for printing on a sheet that is placed on a manual feed tray. In particular, the present disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus for printing on long nonstandard-size sheets.
At times it is necessary to print on a long nonstandard-size sheet using an image forming apparatus to create, for example, point of purchase (“POP”) advertising. In this case, a user places a long nonstandard-size sheet on a manual feed tray and specifies the size of the sheet using an operation panel. The user performs printing by pressing a print start button.
The preset temperature for a fixing device that fixes a toner image transferred to the sheet by heating and pressure application is properly set in an automatic manner based on the sheet size and type specified by the user. If the size of the sheet placed on the manual feed tray differs from the specified sheet size, a problem arises in that the preset temperature for the fixing device differs from the temperature suited for the sheet to be actually subjected to printing. This problem leads to an increased load on the apparatus or contamination inside the apparatus.
One approach to address this problem is a method of displaying a screen for requesting a user to identify the size of a sheet when the sheet is placed on a manual feed tray and not allowing printing to be performed unless the user replies to the request. However, when the printing is to be sequentially performed on a plurality of sheets, the user must identify the size of a sheet every time the sheet is placed on the manual feed tray. This operation is burdensome and annoying to the user.